


hold (out) your hand

by stitchcasual



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: ANGST ANGST NOTHING BUT ANGST, All hurt no comfort, Angst, Black Eagle Route, Burnout - Freeform, Divine Pulse, M/M, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Overuse of Magic, crimson flower chapter 18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:14:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23488927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/pseuds/stitchcasual
Summary: Limits exist to everything, even—perhaps especially—divine magic.Or, what happens when Byleth runs out of divine pulse charges?
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	hold (out) your hand

**Author's Note:**

> Had this thought during one of my CF battles where I just could not get things to go right and immediately cry-laughed, shared it with a friend, and wrote it down to get around to later. Well, it's later now and I'm here to break your hearts.
> 
> Please please heed the archive warnings and the tags: there is nothing good ahead. If that's your jam, then welcome.
> 
> [sad accompanying playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6mwEGygQDfD9BGhsioF2xH?si=dAs7niI7TiO5scapgihcrg)

Caspar is the first to die. He’s never far from Byleth on the battlefield: his fists and Byleth’s sword compose the terrifying advance guard of the Black Eagle Strike Force, Edelgard and her axe not far behind to sweep up the stragglers. Lesser enemies have fled before Caspar’s manic grin; this one gets the drop on him, looming up behind the mage Caspar has borne down to the ground and impaled on the long spikes protruding from his gauntlets. There isn’t enough time to shout a warning, and even if there were, the chaotic frenzy of the battle around them is too much to yell over. 

Byleth parries an incoming blade and dispatches their foe in time to turn again and see the aftermath: a long blade stabbed down through the back of Caspar’s neck, the tip protruding from Caspar’s stomach, distending the leather over his torso. No armor in the world could save him from an attack like that.

For as many times as Byleth has seen a student (no, not students, they’re all soldiers now) die in front of them, they haven’t grown accustomed to it. They’d thought, perhaps, after the first few times, that it would take time, that they would harden against it as they’d been hard against everything in their life until that damned monastery. But Sothis’s gift simply made it harder to bear, allowing them to keep their students safe from harm while still retaining the memories of each of them lifeless on the ground before them.

It’s instinct now, to thrust their hand out and call upon the power of the goddess coursing through their veins. At first, they’d prayed in long, broken sentences, pleading with the goddess to the best of their miserable ability to help them turn back the hands of time for their students as she’d once done for them. When it happened again and again, their prayers shortened with their breaths, no less desperate with the loss of words. Now, as they watch Caspar’s eyes dull and roll back in his skull as he collapses on top of the body of his last kill, all they whisper is “Please.”

There's no one to pray to anymore, Sothis is as much a part of them as their instinctive blinking, but they do it anyway, pleading as much with themself as the seat of Sothis's power as with the greater world that has brought about this situation. Everything freezes, caught in the field Byleth extends from themself. Slowly at first, events begin to move backward, rewinding themselves to fit Byleth's idea of what had been. Byleth watches the sword as the Church soldier withdraws it from Caspar's body, watches Caspar's broken skin knit itself back together, watches the soldier as he steps back a few paces, watches Caspar levitate back to standing followed by the mage he'd slain. In a corner of their mind, Byleth knows they're moving too, can feel their body jerking like a marionette controlled by an amateur puppeteer. They breathe again only when there's enough space between Caspar and his death for them to interpose.

Time flows forward again, and Caspar rushes the mage once more, his fists raised to strike. Byleth disengages from their opponent, ducking under the swing that comes at them and extending the Sword of the Creator. It strikes the Church soldier behind the mage, piercing through the plates where his armor is weakest, and Caspar spins after downing the mage and shoves a gauntlet into the soldier’s neck to finish him off. Byleth can barely hear Caspar’s exuberant shouts through the din around them, but they can see his mouth moving, his eyes lit up wide, and that’s enough. They gesture down the field, and the two of them resume their bloody path.

* * *

Byleth is careful during battle, always alert for sea changes or unexpected consequences. It’s what makes them the most brilliant tactician in Fódlan, especially now that Claude is no longer in the picture. The Strike Force developed a series of movements early on to indicate new or modified orders while in the thick of things, and each of them knows to keep an eye out toward Byleth, Edelgard, Ferdinand, or Petra for updates. It’s a system that has worked incredibly well over the course of their campaign, given them an edge against the armies arrayed against them. Ferdinand and Petra’s mobility is key to this strategy, their ability to range nearly the entire field of battle Byleth’s most important asset in communicating with their troops.

They catch Petra’s eye and flash a few quick arm positions. She nods and wheels her pegasus around, prepared to dash off to deliver the instructions to the small splinter group creeping up the side to eventually pincer the bulk of the enemy force, but instead tilts sideways out of her saddle and pitches toward the ground. Two arrow shafts cluster beneath her heart. Byleth reaches, not fast enough to catch Petra before she impacts with the burning stone of Fhirdiad but at least in time enough to keep from watching her skull shatter and break apart and scatter through the embers lining the streets, in small enough pieces to catch fire within moments and burn to ash. 

Sothis, when she existed as her own voice within Byleth’s mind, used to chastise them for expending too much of their energy on reversing the course of fate. She only had so much power, after all, she berated them, and she wouldn’t see her life snuffed out just because Byleth made a poor decision and refused to live with the consequences. She’d been circumspect about exactly how many times Byleth might be able to pulse backward, and Byleth has never come across a situation where they needed to press their limits.

Twice in one battle is undesirable but doable, despite the level of exhaustion they’re reaching. The fires all around them rob the air from their lungs, stifling the breaths they try to take, settling lead into their limbs while they fight. Burning the city, while perhaps the lowest Rhea has so far stooped in her attempt to halt the Empire’s progress across Fódlan, is an inspired tactical decision. Though it harms Rhea’s troops as well, the toll it’s taking on the Imperial soldiers must be worth the sacrifice to her.

Still Byleth concentrates past their inner turmoil to a place of calm within themself and whispers, “Please.” Petra’s broken limbs shift back into place, a gruesome parody of Linhardt’s healing, and she flies, as though pulled by her feet, back to her seat upon her pegasus. Her flowing hair is once again free of blood running rivers down her braids, her face now whole and defiant. 

This time Byleth signals one word to her, "duck," and the arrows fly over her head as she dips lower for a moment. Petra nods her thanks when she looks back at Byleth, then nods her comprehension at their relayed orders and turns again for the other side of the field.

* * *

Byleth knows death. They're intimately familiar with the concept: it was their trade for years before they came to the monastery, after all. They were good at it. They are still. But there had been a time in their life when they didn't care about it. It bothered them not a whit to pull their sword from a chest and continue through to the next victim…until their victims were the children they'd taught and lived with for a year, children who empathized with their situation, who’d expressed genuine sympathy for them after the death of their father. Children, students they’d come to care for.

Living solely with their father for their entire life up until that point, they hadn’t understood relationships between people. They loved their father, as well as they loved anything anyway, but until the monastery they hadn’t connected with anyone. Their students there were warm and inviting, with few exceptions, an intriguing and odd assortment of temperaments and talents who came together under their instruction, looked up to them as a source of worldly knowledge, and opened up to them about their struggles and hopes and dreams. Byleth found themself drawn in before they realized it and denied it for months afterward, but after their father died, they finally admitted it to themself, crouched on the ground in front of the grave of their parents. Linhardt sent Caspar to find them after the rain started and they didn’t come back to the room, and though he’d complained about the inconvenience of the water on his floor once Caspar dragged Byleth in, Linhardt let them stay as he had for the last couple weeks after Jeralt’s death since the day Byleth had shown up without a word, sat down on his bed, and fell asleep propped against the wall.

Byleth cares about death now. Specific deaths, at least. Faceless soldiers still perish before them without a second thought, but they have some few handfuls of people whose deaths would, and have, cause them pain. All of those people stand assembled around them, shouting their defiance at a vengeful beast whose sole purpose is bent upon Byleth’s destruction. In the short work of a moment, they see what a foolish choice they made, storming the city alongside their students, trusting that together they would prevail.

The Immaculate One lashes out with a tail, sending Imperial soldiers flying. It rears up and smashes down with two massive front feet and wicked curved claws, catching Ferdinand’s war horse as it descends. The horse screams as it’s crushed; Ferdinand screams as his torso and legs are caught with the horse. His lance snaps and still he draws his rapier, thrusting it into the cruel talons now pinning him down. The dragon above him pays him no mind, as though the sword and the person wielding it are merely an inconvenience to be ignored until it goes away. Petra spirals in from the sky and is rebuffed by a wing; Caspar slams his fists into a back leg, futilely attempting to get at the tendon and muscle beneath the thick hide, and receives much the same treatment as Ferdinand as the leg lifts and shoves him into the crumbling wall of a building before stepping on him like an annoying insect. 

From range, the spellcasters and archers rain damage onto the Immaculate One, though each attack hardly looks like it has any effect at all. The great dragon extends its neck and unleashes a torrent upon them, burning the bow in Bernadetta’s hands and scorching her flesh. Dorothea’s hair goes up in flames, the fire quickly rushing down to the roots and licking at her face. Hubert’s attacks pause as he attempts to smother the fire catching in his robes before he goes up like a dry tree. 

Everywhere around them, the people whose deaths Byleth does not wish to see again are happening, and they can do nothing except extend their hand and whisper, “Please.”

This time Ferdinand wheels his horse out from under the giant foot, guiding it on a figure eight route that takes him underneath the beast’s belly so he can thrust up with his lance at its less protected side. Petra falls from her pegasus as the wing slaps her down and she lies unmoving on the ground, and Byleth extends their hand and whispers, “Please.”

Petra ducks the wing and scores a solid hit against the skin just behind the Immaculate One’s eyes, who roars in displeasure. The dragon swipes again at Petra and misses, so instead it turns its attention to easier prey, like the barely armored mages raining spell after spell along its hide. Dorothea and Hubert vanish into piles of smoke and ash as the Immaculate One breathes fire down upon them; Bernadetta rolls to the side, avoiding much of the blast but still singed and limping, her right arm a mass of blisters and blood. She fumbles for her belt knife with her left hand, panic and terror on her face and in the shaking of her grip, and Byleth extends their hand and whispers, "Please." 

Edelgard roars her challenge at the Immaculate One as she charges forward, Aymr raised high to carve down in a sweep across the dragon’s neck. She scores her hit, yelling her triumph and defiance at the creature that has effectively ruled Fódlan through deceit for years. She will not back down; this war can only end one way. She swings her axe up for another strike and staggers backward as the dragon’s tail smashes into her, caving in her armor and leaving her prone on the ground, struggling to breathe through a concave chest piece that must have punctured something. Hubert doesn’t cry out, but his wide eyes at the sight of his emperor laid low gouge as deeply into Byleth’s heart as any scream. They struggle to catch their breath against the exertion of battle and the strain of bending time; their arm shakes as they extend their hand and whisper, “Please.”

All around them the battle rages, students fighting for the future Edelgard has promised them, a future where they’re free to live and love, rise and fall according to their desire and tenacity and not an arbitrary system they had no say being born into. They all believe in her and fight for her cause like zealots, living and dying in order to change the world. Except they can’t die: Byleth refuses a reality where any more of the people they’ve allowed into their heart and life are torn away from them. They couldn’t save their father; they’ll save everyone else, fate be damned.

They hurl the tip of the Sword of the Creator toward the Immaculate One, drawing its attention away from the students attempting to get back on their feet and rally again after being knocked back. The pounding fear of being in such close proximity to such a large and dangerous creature grips Byleth’s heart, sinking claws as deadly as any dragon’s into the unbeating flesh.

“Give her back!” the Immaculate One screeches, lashing out with one large forefoot to rake across Byleth’s chest, drawing deep grooves in their armor. Blood wells up in the gashes, filling the space and then spilling over in the span of a few seconds, running down their body to drip weakly to the ground. How odd, then, that the rest of them seems to slow into one long expanse and contraction of time. They wait, dreamily curious, for things to speed up again, trying to focus their eyes to see beyond themself to where their students fight yet. If they can't see, they can't save them; if they can't save them, the world might as well be lost.

Byleth struggles to sit up, unsure when they fell but unwilling to think about it now. Arms wrap around them, familiar tones forming familiar words above them, and Byleth blinks their eyes to a double vision of Linhardt, his hands busy sketching healing sigils and pressing white light through their sundered armor. Linhardt's own robes and armor are bloodied, though in smears and splotches that makes it unlikely that any of it is his, simply the compound interest of a healer during wartime. His face is pale and drawn, and Byleth recognizes the signs of someone approaching their upper limits.

They raise a hand to grab Linhardt's wrist and shake their head. "Not me," they say. "Not now."

Linhardt opens his mouth to disagree, and vehemently from the set of his eyes, but Byleth shakes their head again. Their sight darkens at the edges, obscuring their hand now clasped in both of Linhardt's. They can still feel that, though distantly, as if their hand has been separated from the rest of their body and lives somewhere warm and floating.

"Wait."

And they extend the hand not held by Linhardt and whisper, "Please."

This isn't the first time they've used Sothis's ability to save their own life. It isn't even the second or fourth. Even they make catastrophic mistakes in battle on occasion, and they have the scars to prove it. These wounds won't scar them, not physically anyway, but they’ll live with the memories if it means they can live with their people as well. It wouldn’t really be that terrible a thing, to die, but they can’t until the world has been freed. They promised.

Time freezes, then inches its way backward, each step a powerful act of will. There is no sensation in this gray world, but Byleth feels the loss of Linhardt's hands around theirs keenly even so. He'll be so fascinated to hear about this when they make it out of here; he's pressed Byleth for details after every battle since they confessed to possessing the ability, in silent tears on the floor of Linhardt's room the day their father died. It is Linhardt's most frustrating research: knowing that Byleth has and will continue to manipulate time in front of his face yet being incapable of interacting in any meaningful way with the proceedings. He settles for badgering Byleth for comprehensive field reports though it doesn't truly satisfy him. Nothing will, not until he bores of the concept or until Byleth figures out how to bring him along.

They watch Linhardt rewind from them and know that the stricken look on his face will haunt their dreams for years to come. 

They gain their feet, and the Immaculate One's claws recede. It's fortunate they don't need to pulse back much farther; they feel like they're wading through sludge to get this far. They refuse to consider the possibility that this is the last time they'll be able to do this, and duck down and to the side to avoid the claw strike as it comes again. The limit to Sothis's power within them remains untested in its full capacity; the middle of their most important fight is hardly the most ideal place to conduct this experiment, but they have little choice in the matter.

There may not be cause to yet, however: the Immaculate One struggles visibly to keep battering at the Strike Force's offense, and as Byleth charges back into the fray, Caspar lands a hit that collapses one of the beast's back legs. 

" _No!_ "

The scream echoes through the burned-out ruins of Fhirdiad, shaking the husks of walls and the souls of students. Any hope they might have had of the dragon going down easily at the end are dashed as the Immaculate One thrashes, its wings beating against the air, its limbs flailing out to strike at anyone and everyone in close enough range. Caspar and Edelgard are pushed back to avoid being crushed, and the ranged fighters miss more often than not with the unpredictable way the beast moves. Ferdinand rushes from one side, harrying high with his lance in a desperate attempt to draw its attention. It works, and he disappears under wicked claws.

Before Byleth can reach out to correct this grievous error, Caspar meets the swinging tail and doesn't get up again from the rubble of the wall he shattered on impact. Linhardt sprints for him, hands and mouth in motion, casting healing magic in advance of his arrival. He doesn't complete the spell. The Immaculate One's enraged eyes fix on him, and with one scoop of its giant snout, it sends Linhardt to join Caspar in a heap against what little of the building that remains standing.

Behind Byleth, flames erupt and catch in the bodies of their students as they dash recklessly toward Linhardt. They can hear the screams as they run, agonized shrieks cut short one by one. And it matters, they all matter. What doesn't matter is what Byleth does now, cradling Linhardt's face in their hands, brushing the matted hair from his eyes and willing him to open them again.

“Pr-pro—” Linhardt retches blood and groans. “Why haven't you—” He breaks off to cough like his lungs are about to exit his body, and then his blue eyes open to stare up at them. He looks curious, detached in the way he gets when he's observing a complication, but Byleth can see the dimming of the spark behind his eyes. They bend over him, avoiding that sight, to press their forehead to his and whisper, “Please.”

Each step back from Linhardt takes Byleth's full concentration: there's a mire around their mind, like they caught the edge of one of Hubert's powerful, dark spells except the impediment is within them, not exerted upon them. They watch as Linhardt is set on his feet and retreats to the back ranks, back to where he's safe. The temptation to restart time here, to leave the rest of their students to their fate and just save Linhardt nearly overwhelms them, but the vision of Edelgard crumpled on the ground, bodily protected by a burning Hubert, keeps them on their path.

They set everyone to rights, make sure Caspar gets out of the wall and Ferdinand escapes from under the claws, before they let their control fade. For long seconds afterward, they can do nothing but stand there, the Sword of the Creator loose in their grasp, as they fight to catch their breath against every burning lungful of air. Edelgard shields them as they recover, cutting down an enterprising Church soldier who appears from behind a collapsed wall. She offers them a grim nod when they finally meet her eyes, and together they wade back in. 

Every second lasts ten, molasses stretching between one moment and the next. Byleth can't tell if it's them, if Sothis's gift has…side effects when used enough, or if it's an enemy spell that's entangled them. A quick glance reveals no one nearby, a relief as much as a worry. So they head for Linhardt. It’s become instinct at this point: something wrong? Find Linhardt. During a battle, he can heal them, keep them fighting for as long as it takes to win. Off the field, they find his presence soothing and undemanding, and have passed many long hours with him, separately engaged in their own work while still nearby each other. They used to train with their father if something was bothering them, focusing past the mental to the physical until their problems faded; now they sit in silence and distract themself from the mental with the mental. 

They wonder if it’s made them soft.

Linhardt is too close again to the front lines, closing wounds on Ferdinand’s flank before warping both man and horse back to the Immaculate One’s side where they rejoin the fray. He meets Byleth’s eyes, his brows furrowing, then scans their body, raising his hands in a familiar healing gesture. They dare to breathe easy, to believe that they can make it, that from here it will all be fine.

A giant scaled tail lashes down, and Linhardt falls to the ground beneath it. The Immaculate One looks as smug as a monstrous creature can and roars with laughter that echoes in the empty streets.

“Now you will watch! Watch as I take everything from you! Watch as they _suffer!_ ” 

Byleth watches Linhardt struggle to search for a vulnerary, and they hold out their hand toward him and whisper, “Please.”

The tail rises and Linhardt stands and Byleth once again is farther away from him than they want to be. They run this time, as fast as they can move in the state they’re in, exhausted and only upright through sheer force of will and divine favor. They can hear the laughter again, bouncing off the walls of their mind, as the tail swings out again and pins Linhardt against a pile of rubble. He looks up and at them, and they know what he’s asking without any words. They stop running, their body heavy, the Sword of the Creator nearly lost from their grip, and they hold out their hand and whisper, “Please.”

They can’t go back so far, can barely take things back to before the tail swipe. Their breaths are ragged as time moves forward again, and they stand, bent forward at the waist, trying to pull themself into order. The laughter gets louder.

“Watch!”

Their head snaps up to see the Immaculate One’s massive jaws closing around Linhardt’s body, jerking up and shaking twice before releasing him to fall boneless to the ground. Now the blood covering Linhardt’s robes is his own, pulsing out of dark wounds in a grim cadence, the measure of his slowly fading life. They can barely lift a hand as they whisper, “Please.”

Sharp spikes of pain lance through their torso, up through their chest and heart, and they collapse to their knees as the Immaculate One bites down on Linhardt. They try again before Linhardt hits the paving stone.

“Please.”

Hysterical laughter surrounds them now, creating a cage they cannot be free of. Linhardt dangles from the dragon’s jaws. 

“Please.”

Their hand can’t hold the Sword of the Creator, and it lays on the ground beside them, glowing and impotent. The dragon laughs and drops Linhardt. He labors to breathe, to press a hand to one of the many punctures across his body. White magic starts, stutters, flares out. 

“Please.”

The dragon drops Linhardt. They can hear his cry of pain from where they kneel, their body frozen too far away yet close enough to him to be torturous. There are no sounds outside of the dragon’s laughter and Linhardt’s soft keening. They refuse this reality.

“Please…”

The dragon drops Linhardt. They swear this time they hear something break as he lands in a heap, his head lolling over to pin them with those eyes that ask, not accuse. Tears gather in their eyes.

“Please…”

Linhardt watches them, a frown creasing his face before it’s overshadowed by a wince of pain. Tears streak down their cheeks.

“Please…”

They see no condemnation in his eyes, only confusion, and then nothing at all. 

“Pl—” 

Darkness takes them, a familiar darkness, and underpinning it all, that terrible laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [twitter](http://twitter.com/stitchcasual) if you want to yell at me, otherwise you can leave kudos if I hurt you and comment if you wanna threaten me/cry ;)


End file.
